Some of you might remember about 4 months ago I posted about how I was selling a Sony Vaio laptop on E-bay, in hopes of having enough funds to get the laptop I really, really wanted an IBM x41 convertible tablet. At the time it seemed extremely unlikely that I would be able to do this. Configured the way I wanted the x41 tablet was well over $2,000 which was certainly outside of what was reasonable for me to spend on the laptop at the time. Not to mention our stove had recently died and needed replacing. With a stove costing at least $400 and the type of stove my wife wanted costing around $500, there was no reasonable way to expect I could spend even $1200 on a new laptop. I came to the conclusion that I would have to get another laptop, and had actually come quite happy about it. However before I did even that, I needed to sell the Sony Vaio.
To make a long story short, this was not an easy process. I listed the laptop on E-bay three times. Three times it “sold”. Despite my auction clearly stating I would not ship internationally, twice the laptop was purchased with Buy-It-Now by Nigerian Scammers. The last time I listed the item the bidder did not pay. With the 2-3 weeks it took EACH time to haggle with e-bay to get my final value fee back literally months passed. I never did get them to refund any of the listing fees despite the fact that I strongly believe the issue of the scammers is their problem, and they should be doing something to resolve it or at least making it easy for a seller to get refund. After 3 times of having issues, I’d had enough with e-bay.
It was about this time that we found out that someone at our church had a brand new stove exactly like my wife wanted for $300. This knocked one of the big expenses out of the way 
At Christmas I found out that my cousin-in-law was looking for a new computer. I was able to give her a great deal on the laptop and finally get it sold. Not long afterwards I came to the conclusion that I was not going to find a laptop that did what I wanted it to do for the price I wanted to pay at either Dell or IBM’s website, and I turned back to E-bay.
After looking at many IBM laptops, I stumbled across an X41 Tablet listing. Four months ago the x41 tablet had been selling used on e-bay for for $1600-$2000+. With the new models out they were now selling for $900-$1400. That was just about in my price range! If I could catch the right auction I could get the exact laptop I had wanted for under $900! To help increase my chances of getting the laptop for this lower price I used a tool called AuctionSniper (A post about AuctionSniper to show up soon).
I was able to land an x41 tablet for $830 , complete with 1.5gb of RAM . I’m very excited! Its scheduled to be delivered Tuesday but I am hoping I will see it tomorrow since its already in my local Fedex depot. God is very faithful. Several times throughout the process I was tempted to buy a laptop before I had sold the one I had. I felt like He kept telling me to wait. In the end I’m getting exactly what I wanted which originally didn’t seem possible .